The True Origin of Thanksgiving

"On October 24, 1788, in Newport, New Hampshire, Captain Gordon Buell, a veteran of the American Revolution, and his wife, Martha, greeted the arrival of a daughter named Sarah. She was a brilliant child, an avid reader, and grew into an accomplished autodidact. By 1813, she was a schoolteacher, married to a local lawyer named David Hale. Nine years later, Hale died, and Sarah was left to provide for their five children."

"She is credited with defining the Thanksgiving feast, turkey and all, in one of her novels. And she was relentless, writing to presidents Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. Finally, on September 28, 1863, she wrote again to President Abraham Lincoln. From What So Proudly We Hail: In this letter, written on September 28, 1863, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale takes her campaign on behalf of a national Thanksgiving holiday directly to the President of the United States."

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale was born on October 24, 1788, in Newport, New Hampshire, and developed into an accomplished autodidact and avid reader. By 1813 she worked as a schoolteacher and married lawyer David Hale; after his death she supported five children through her writing. She became a published poet and author, edited a Ladies Magazine and Literary Gazette, and published Poems For Our Children, which included the famous line "Mary had a little lamb." Beginning in 1846 she relentlessly lobbied presidents to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. Her September 1863 letter to Abraham Lincoln led to the presidential proclamation establishing Thanksgiving as a national observance.

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